BROWN IN BLACK AND WHITE: On Being a South Asian Woman Academic

All these grammar corrections! How come when you grew up elsewhere your English is so good?!" The student-a young, White woman enrolled in the required multicultural education class I taught-scowled and blurted this out indignantly. She was taking in my feedback on her assignment; in addition to addressing substantive issues, I had also asked her to pay attention to grammar. Then, as she perceived her peers’ shocked and embarrassed countenances, she blushed a bright, tomato red. Of course, I, too, registered the inappropriateness of this questioning of my authority-the student had presumed to challenge my feedback, not because she disagreed with the substance of it but rather because, in her eyes, I, although her teacher, was from “elsewhere.” It seemed that she was unable to accept that someone who was not “American” could correct her English. In the few seconds in which all of this played out, I found myself noting the unexamined “othering” inherent in the question, recognizing its inappropriateness, feeling angry about the racism implied by it, and then returning from my own emotional responses (not reaction) into the “outer” space of the classroom, to acknowledge to myself that the student was speaking out defensively in response to my feedback on her assignment. Somewhere in all of this, I must have drawn the proverbial deep breath, and then I said: “I will answer the question. But first let us talk about where this question is coming from.”.