Racist nativist microaggressions and the professional resistance of racialized English language teachers in Toronto

Abstract

English language teaching upholds racist nativist notions that competent teachers are white native speakers of English born in majority-white countries. These notions manifest when international students, expecting to be taught by these speakers, are skeptical about having a racialized instructor, who may be seen as non-native to English and the nation where it is natively spoken. Rather than overt, this skepticism may appear in the form of microaggressions. Informed by critical race and resistance theories, this article uses interviews with 10 racialized teachers in Toronto, Canada to detail the racist nativist microaggressions that they experience at work and their professional resistance strategies that combat these microaggressions. The findings describe the following microaggressions: interrogations of the teachers’ nativeness, insinuations of their foreignness to English, and behavioral indications that they are ‘invading’ the classroom. Their professional resistance either conformed to or sought to transform notions of the supremacy of white (Canadian) teachers.