Throughout Villanueva’s piece, I kept wondering how a collective could work to change the racial statistics that are referenced consistently. While numbers can be startling, I found the stories on page four of the pdf to be the most grueling instances of the fatal effects of racism. On this page, there are bullet points of events talked about from E. San Juan’s Racial Formations/Critical Transformations. These aren’t just stories from the early days of the country but from the ‘90s. In the grand scheme of racism in America, it’s sadly not that surprising considering the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah Mcclain, and so many more not just in 2020, but over the course of the 21st century. It’s absolutely heartbreaking and Villanueva is right: the colonial mindset needs to be done away with, but I wonder how. The article from the CCCC brings up strong word choice with “demand” especially in context with the title “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!” This article covers how the pandemic is killing Black people at a disproportionate rate, as well as ousting the institutions and organizations that condemn police brutality, yet aren’t actively anti-racist. Being actively anti-racist, especially as linguist and language researchers (since that’s the article’s focus) is important for implementing in education and in creating academic materials. Necessary anti-racist activism can (and should) begin at the college level and the list of demands for anti-racist implementation in universities/colleges in the article does help answer my questions that arose from the Villanueva piece.
Powell’s chapter “Listening to ghosts” connects with points Villanueva made in terms of breaking free from the colonial mindset. I think about ghosts a lot too, and that might be because I’m currently taking a class that incorporates ghosts stories written by American authors. It’s quite interesting how ghosts in fiction are presumed to have special powers, but I think they are powerless being stuck in a liminal space. Therefore, the power ghosts can have is given by the living and that is exactly what current heteronormative society does with the ghosts of America’s past. While the past must be acknowledged in order to prevent a continuous cycle of racial-based pain, it has to be acknowledged so it doesn’t continue, and yet here we are in 2020… With that said, Powell’s use of “ghost” makes me realize that ghosts must be acknowledged, such as universities, corporations, houses, and more have been built on Native lands. Powell’s article brings to light how one of the paths we can go down for our next project is to acknowledge these truths of human existence. I also found Powell’s story on her tattoo to further the visibility of history. We must ask ourselves what have we been told about history, and then find the line where erasure begins.
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