Wrestling with Race: The Implications of Integrative Antiracism Education for Immigrant ESL Youth

Abstract

This article presents selected fi ndings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 immigrant ESL high school students in a 3-day innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leadership program. This case study is grounded in a social identity theoretical framework which assumes that linguistic interactions are not neutral nor is the right to be listened to universally accorded, but that these are linked to identity and structured through social power relations (including racism). In this article I fi rst ask how students came to understand race and racism as they used the integrative antiracism analytical framework of the program to examine examples of discrimination from their personal experience. Second, I ask what implications their analysis had for their identity claims as immigrant ESL learners. The research argues for an understanding of racialized power dynamics as integral to social identity construction through English language learning, especially as they intersect with discourses of national identity and cultural citizenship in the case of immigrant ESL learners. The study suggests that integrative antiracism education can support immigrant language learners’ intersectional and multilevel understandings of discrimination. These expanded understandings of discrimination can also facilitate broader possibilities for social identity claims and ethical visions of Canadianness.