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AS I was preparing this talk, it occurred to me that there is something ironic about talking about recruiting and retaining minority faculty members and students at a time when the Supreme Court has dealt a serious blow to affirmative action. It seems ironic because, like it or not, discussions about minorities and their recruitment have taken place (until very recently, at least) in a context in which there was a concern about affirmative action, that is, about “making up” for previous exclusions.
It appears now, however, that many Americans are saying: “Okay, we've done our part. We want to go back to the way it was, to hiring and retaining people on the basis of merit. Let's stop the special categories. Let's make sure that the best people are hired no matter what their color.” While some of us might disagree about whether or not merit was, in fact, the main criterion applied in most hiring decisions, what is important is that the perception of that reality exists and that it makes people angry to believe that skin color and not merit is used as a basis for these decisions.
The fact of the matter is that these are trying and confusing times. These are times when on college campuses across the United States there have been out-breaks of racial incidents, of angry white students expressing disdain for or dislike of their minority peers. These are times when there is anger about the use of non-English languages in this country, when a large number of states have already introduced or passed legislation designed to formally establish English as the country's official language. Indeed, these are times when changes in the United States economy have resulted in a situation where for the first time majority-group members are competing with immigrant and other minorities for scarce jobs. Many “assimilated” Americans, writes David Spener, are “experiencing a loss in relative status that forces them to work along-side and compete for jobs with foreign workers and other out-group members who according to the myth, ‘belong’ at the bottom because they are not Americanized” (14). These are times when, again as Spener puts it, the United States is offering immigrants an ambiguous social contract that reads:
In order to participate in a non-marginal way in the U.S. economy, you must become an American by giving up your loyalty to your home country and language, and you must learn the language of the American elite. In order to become an American, you must meet certain standards. This country is in the process of raising its standards because, unfortunately, there are already too many Americans. If you aren't allowed to become an American, there's still plenty of room for you in this country-at the bottom.
(146)
Clearly for Spener and for a number of other Americans, the problems we are facing today have to do with how much room there is both at the top and at the bottom.
These trying times are not going to be particularly kind to minorities. On the one hand, demographic projections for some states (for example, California) predict that by the year 2000 there will no longer be a majority of any group and that minorities (blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) will outnumber the white majority. This suggests that the states will have to plan for a future in which traditionally undereducated groups must become part of a technologically oriented work force.
On the other hand, there is a fear of what such a situation will bring, fear of the lowering of standards, fear about whether bright white students will be left out in the cold, about whether they will be caught in a numbers bind that results in their not being admitted to the best institutions in the state or the country. And at the same time, there is a fear, at the college and university levels, that we do not know how to educate the new majority, that is, the students whom the educational system has normally failed long before they reach our college classrooms.
So what, you may wonder, does this have to do with departments of foreign languages? Why should we, in the light of the various trends and conditions that I've alluded to, be concerned about recruiting and retaining minority faculty members and students? Since it is obvious that this is no longer the early seventies, since it is clear that we may not even get brownie points for displaying a token minority in our departments, why should we care, and why should we bother?
In California, given its demographics, I would answer the question by saying what should already be obvious to the university community. Our students in the not too distant future will for the most part be nonwhite, minority, and nonmainstream. If we intend to stay alive, in terms of majors, we must begin to attract this group of very diverse students-just as in the past we attracted their more mainstream counterparts. I would argue further that, unless we want to depend exclusively on foreigners for our future language teachers and university faculty members, we must at some point come to terms with the fact that minority students must indeed become part of the mainstream in departments of foreign languages.
Many of you would probably agree that we do indeed need to see ourselves as being able to produce students of language and literature of many different backgrounds. You would possibly also agree that, should it be our purpose to attract Asian, African American, or Hispanic students into our departments of Russian or German or French or Spanish, it would be important to have on the faculty members of those groups whose expertise in a foreign language (other than their own ethnic language) might serve as a stimulus and model for members of the same group. We could all leave here convinced that if appropriate, if the right opportunity arose, and if the right candidate emerged, we would indeed consider the possibility of hiring an African American professor of German or an Asian professor of French.
But the issue of who is a member of a minority and who is a member of a majority is far more complex in departments of foreign languages than it is in other academic departments. Recruiting and retaining minority faculty members and students in departments of foreign languages has many more possible meanings than it has in everyday America. It is these many possible meanings that I want to talk about today. Specifically, I want to address the questions: What kinds of minorities are there in foreign language departments? Why are these individuals considered minorities? What should we do about our intent to recruit and retain minority faculty members and students?
Foreign language departments are traditionally made up primarily of scholars from two very different backgrounds: (1) native speakers of the target language who were raised in Europe or in a context in which the target language was the societal language and (2) Americans who studied the language as a foreign language and who to a greater or lesser degree actually speak the language. The question of who can be considered a minority in foreign language departments will be answered differently depending on which of the two above groups is either the majority or the group in power.
Let us consider for a moment the case of non-native-speaking foreign language professionals. When a department of foreign languages is made up of native speakers of European or other foreign languages, who have come to this country as adults, there is a tendency for them to belittle the linguistic abilities of English-speaking Americans who have elected to make the teaching and study of a foreign language their career. In some departments, near-native ability is not enough. Americans who have learned the target language in formal study are excluded from the higher reaches of power within the department. Even those nonnatives who have spent years perfecting their second language in foreign settings are viewed with tolerant disdain. The underlying belief, in these departments, is that only those persons who have grown up in the original culture and who have learned the target language in the course of primary socialization are truly qualified to teach the language and the culture in its different manifestations.
There is no question that in such departments, it is the American non-native-speaking faculty member who can be regarded as the excluded minority. It is these faculty members who, regardless of their scholarship and other qualifications, are found wanting.
Being a native speaker does not, however, necessarily save a foreign language faculty member from being looked down on by one's colleagues. Because the notion of which language variety is prestigious or considered correct varies considerably, it is not always true that being a native speaker will necessarily mean that a person will be accepted and considered a worthy colleague. Again, depending on which group is in power, it may be that the only truly valued members of the faculty will be those who speak, for example, the Spanish of Madrid or Parisian French. Speakers of other varieties of the target language (no matter how native or genuine in certain parts of the world) would be considered faulty models for language teaching. For example, speakers of Caribbean Spanish or Canadian French are frequently considered undesirable additions to departments of Spanish or French if their speech betrays their geographical origin.
The judgment of what is bad or inferior language is again directly related to the views held by the group in power. It can even happen that all native speakers of the language will be found to be speakers of the wrong type of language. This occurs when the majority of the members of the department are American non-native speakers of the target language who normally teach their literature courses in English. Because they themselves do not speak the language or keep up with the ever changing native norms governing speech, they often tend to judge native-speaker performance from an idealized, unrealistic textbook perspective and to consider unqualified all who appear not to function according to such textbook standards. In these departments, the target language seldom reflects the growth and dynamism that it displays in its natural setting. Instead, it is subjected to rigid controls and a position that views all change as either unnecessary or simply not typical of the “best” usage. Clearly, then, members of foreign language departments who can be identified as belonging to the “despised” or “excluded” minority can vary greatly. Without even considering the variables of race and ethnic background, it is obvious that marginal status is easily achieved.
Obviously, I am exaggerating. Departments dominated by one group are surely a thing of the past. Still, it is important to examine the trends that were very much around us as we received our professional training. Without an understanding of the attitudes that have been present in our departments toward colleagues who could, from a broader standpoint, be considered mainstream or majority, we will not be able to understand how and why we respond the way we do to today's ethnic and racial minorities.
The term “ethnic and racial minorities” as I am using it here refers to those groups who in the United States today are considered to have minority status. These include blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and, in some cases, Asians of one specific group or another.
Given the prejudices existing in departments of foreign language toward nativeness, nonnativeness, and standardness of language, it should not surprise us that both faculty members and students from minority groups are rarely recruited in large numbers. English-speaking blacks, for example, may be just another example of undesirable nonnative speakers. In departments where native language skills are the primary qualifications for a person to teach a language, non-natives of any color or background will generally not be encouraged to apply for available positions. Seeing the descriptor “near-native ability” in the job announcement coupled with a few other key phrases is enough to suggest to any nonnative speaker and, most especially, to any person of color, that she or he need not apply.
The same is true for students. They too are affected by the attitudes existing in the department toward the likelihood that nonnative speakers will become good enough in their second language to teach both the language and the literature. While undergraduates of different racial and linguistic backgrounds may be generally welcome in departments as majors or as double majors, this is often not the case at the graduate level. 1 If a department has access to a large pool of native-speaking foreigners, it will often take these foreign students over its own non-native-speaking products. It is not surprising then that few blacks of English-language background pursue graduate studies in foreign languages. It would appear that they have two strikes against them. One, because they are native speakers, they are destined to be second-class citizens in some departments. In addition, they are members of a racial group toward which many other cultural groups harbor prejudice.
The situation becomes even more complex when one considers the place of ethnic-language speakers in departments of foreign languages. By ethnic-language speakers I mean second-, third-, or even fourth-generation members of immigrant families who are American-born and who have retained some competence in the original ethnic language. This group includes Spanish speakers of Mexican American and Puerto Rican backgrounds, New England franco-phones, Portuguese speakers from Massachusetts, French speakers from Louisiana, and so on. These Americans usually speak a contact variety of their ethnic languages, that is to say, a variety that reflects a strong English influence and that may also reflect a style or level of language not normally used in academic settings. These speakers of immigrant languages are often considered undesirable in our departments. They speak the wrong kind of language. They appear not to want or to be able to forget all that they know in order to begin again, and in most cases their class backgrounds clash directly with those of the faculty members from their original countries (see Valdés, “Foreign Language Teaching”).
Teaching these “native” speakers a “standard” variety of the target language is a new challenge for most departments. There is much that we do not know about how second dialects are acquired and much that we have yet to learn about what the costs of learning such a second dialect involve.
In Spanish departments the need to create special courses for “bilingual” students has existed for some time. Today, increased enrollment by Chicanos and Puerto Ricans has resulted in special tracks designed to help them sound like “educated” monolingual Spanish speakers. All too often, however, the special tracks are directed either by nonnative teaching assistants or by native-speaking graduate students from Spanish-speaking countries. Departments of Spanish rarely see the need for having courses taught by tenuretrack faculty members who have themselves gone through the process of acquiring a second dialect. When one might expect departments to use an opportunity to bring in a member of a minority (both linguistic and ethnic), it does not necessarily happen. Given the attitudes toward speakers of the “wrong” variety of language, the argument is often made that ethnic-language speakers (Chicanos and Puerto Ricans) do not speak standard Spanish well enough to compete for a position.
Once again, an existing prejudice in language departments toward speakers of different (and not always stigmatized) varieties of the target language is in operation. In this case, however, both the native-speaking faculty members of foreign origin and the non-native-speaking Americans can join in the same cause: upholding the linguistic standards of the department. There is no telling what harm will come from having a French-speaking black Haitian professor! God forbid that we should expose our students to a Chicano whose barrio roots may at times still be evident! How absurd to even consider that one might ever appoint a German-born, German-speaking colleague of Turkish ethnic background!
As is evident from my remarks, it is my position that the issues of recruiting and retaining minority faculty members cannot be understood or approached without understanding the underlying prejudices that exist in departments of foreign languages. These prejudices, value judgments, and assumptions are very much a tradition within our profession, and we have defended them for years. Unexamined, however, they will serve to undermine even sincere efforts to increase the representation of ethnic and racial minorities in our departments.
For department heads, this means that well-meaning policies-even those voted on by an entire “liberal” faculty-will have no practical results if these prejudices and assumptions are not discussed openly. What the faculty must be made more aware of is how issues of native ability and standards of language will interact with factors such as race, class, and ethnicity.
The task of examining and discussing such issues will not be easy. In these troubled times, current tendencies are working against all the reasons we might have for examining both our prejudices and our motivation for even being concerned about recruiting minority faculty members and students. My own view, nevertheless, is that it is quite possible to bring about change by examining these trends and tendencies. Indeed, many foreign language professionals have a distinct advantage in that, because of their own experiences, they are able to recognize policies of exclusion that others might not see. This recognition and understanding can provide a strong basis for building departments' strengths in attracting and retaining both faculty members and students who belong to ethnic and cultural minority groups.
The question of the place of minority persons in departments of foreign languages is an important one, and it is one that directly reflects the long-standing work of the Modern Language Association. Through its commissions and committees, the MLA has strongly supported policies of inclusion by providing a number of forums in which issues of both race and gender have been examined.
In supporting the issues raised here, the MLA can once again take the lead in making legitimate the assessment and analysis of established prejudices and judgments about nativeness, nonnativeness, and varieties of language. Appropriate commissions and committees can be charged with working on particular activities (e.g., planning sessions at the MLA convention, examining the concept of “near-native” as found in job announcements, publishing articles) that can help to create a climate wherein the questions raised here can be discussed openly.
Other projects can also be developed, endeavors that, like the project Teaching Women's Literature from a Regional Perspective, have the potential for bringing about fundamental change in the teaching and learning of subject matter. The proposed traveling exhibit on language in the United States, for example, can do much to raise the consciousness of many foreign language professionals about the presence of non-English languages in this country and about ethnic native speakers of languages currently considered to be “foreign” to this nation.
Work with Faculty. By building on profession-wide concerns, department chairs can also do much to foment a willingness to consider the issues raised here and to examine their impact on the department's success in attracting and retaining members of ethnic and cultural minorities. A series of faculty colloquia on the subject of language varieties, for example, can serve as the point of departure for the examination of notions of prescriptivism and intolerance. Important work done by sociolinguists on language attitudes can be introduced and explored. Work carried out in other languages (e.g., on world Englishes) can be used to illustrate current views about presumed “ownership” of particular languages. Angel Rosenblat's monographs El castellano de España y el castellano de América: Unidad y diferenciaci'on can be used to suggest that absolute notions of correctness are based on values and attitudes and not on linguistic evidence. Even video productions such as American Tongues can be used to initiate exchanges among colleagues. It must be clear, however, that the intent of such discussions is not to place blame on individuals, but rather to examine the very nature of language and society and to come to an understanding of how class, regional background, and ethnic background affect one's views about the speech of others from different classes and backgrounds.
Work with Students. In working to attract and retain minority students, department chairs again play a key role. They must carefully monitor the enrollment of these students and examine their successes and failures. If a department enrolls black speakers of Haitian French or Chicano speakers of Spanish, chairs must make an effort to become informed about work that has been carried out with ethnic native speakers (see Valdés, “Teaching Ethnic Languages”). These students present a different profile, and if they are to be successful, special classes may need to be developed. The first step is to attract and recruit graduate students and faculty members who can work with such students. Indeed, even if most members of the department are not ready to accept speakers of different varieties as “well qualified” to teach the “standard” language, they may agree that ethnic native speakers enrolled at the undergraduate level need special attention and different instruction. The very nurturing of the enrollment of such undergraduates may be the most effective way of “opening up” the department to new ideas and new attitudes.
There are many barriers to recruiting and retaining minority students and faculty members in departments of foreign languages, but there are also many answers. At the national and professional level, the answers involve national organizations and the continuing effort of these organizations to help members of the profession to see their roles in an increasingly diverse nation. At the department level, the answers are primarily in the hands of department heads who must provide leadership and guidance and perhaps also weather storms and attacks. It is at the individual level, however, that lasting change will take place. As more students of different backgrounds enroll in our classes and as we recognize a reflection of our own youthful enthusiasm in their discovery of great works, I am optimistic that we will encourage their continued love of the language to which we have dedicated our professional lives.
The author is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. This article is based on a paper presented at the 1989 ADFL Seminar West in Northridge, California.
1 At some institutions, foreign language departments are judged according to the number of majors they graduate, rather than according to the total number of students served in all language courses offered, including courses used to fulfill language requirements. In these departments, the numbers game results in students being encouraged to declare double majors in a language and in another subject.
American Tongues: A Documentary about the Way People Talk in the U.S. Prod. Center for New American Media. New Day Films, 1986.
Rosenblat, Angel. El castellano de España y el castellano de América: Unidad y diferenciaci'on. Caracas: Instituto de Filología Andres Bello, 1962.
Spener, David. “Transitional Bilingual Education and the Socialization of Immigrants.” Harvard Educational Review 58.2 (1988): 133-53.
Valdés, Guadalupe. “Foreign Language Teaching and the Proposed Foundation for International Studies.” Profession (1988): 3-9.
——. “Teaching Ethnic Languages in the United States: Implications for Curriculum and Faculty Development.” ADFL Bulletin 11.3 (1980): 31–35. [Show Article]
© 1991 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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